Two new
class-action lawsuits accuse Allstate Insurance Company and First National Insurance Company of America (a Safeco company), of deliberately reducing the value of vehicles in total loss insurance claims, using phony data to reduce the claim...

The Allstate Corporation (NYSE: ALL) today announced estimated catastrophe losses for the month of March 2018 of $222 million, pre-tax ($175 million after-tax), and an estimated $361 million, pre-tax ($285 million after-tax), for first quarter 2018.

The most recent short interest data has been released for the 12/29/2017 settlement date, and we here at Dividend Channel like to sift through this fresh data and order the underlying components of the S&P 500 by "days to cover." There are a number of ways to look at short data, for example the total number of shares short; but one metric that we find particularly useful is the "days to cover" metric because it considers both the total shares short and the average daily volume of shares typically traded. The number of shares short is then compared to the average daily volume, in order to calculate the total number of trading days it would take to close out all of the open short positions if every share traded represented a short position being closed.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill that would allow private insurers to compete with the government for flood-coverage policies. One problem is that lawmakers still haven't approved new funds for the National Flood Insurance Program, which could run out of money next month.